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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: KennyR on May 23, 2003, 02:50:36 PM
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Recently I bought a new CD-ROM and a CD-RW, one to replace an old drive that didn't work anymore. I put a CD my 48x CD-ROM drive - and it sounds like a chainsaw. The drives spins the CD so fast that it is actually slower with small files as it constantly has to speed up and speed down. The noise is truly terrible, and the heat from the drive if spinning for a few minutes can't be good.
Compare that to an 8x drive I've had in my PC for years. It's ultra quiet, and fast with smaller files, and doesn't get hot. I can play CD-ROMs full of mp3s all day and it doesn't get hot or broken. If I did that with my new ones I'd be lucky to hear the mp3s, and I'd probably damage something.
So why are we paying for this crap? I think we've been suckered by the old "bigger numbers is better" sales pitch and bought stuff we don't even need, which is even less usable than before because of it. And does the same go for CPUs, do you think?
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Your right on the noise and heat my liteon cd writer is ok but my lg dvd rom is noisy smooth tray mechanism though, and my phillips in the second pc is noisy and not very smooth you can feel the vibrations.I guess its the price for what they call progress. :-)
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Fortunately CD-ROMs have the possibility be controlled by software to spin in a number of different speeds. That would enable you to run your 48X drive in 8X. If you are using windows on your pc I know for certain that a number of utilities exists.
Whenever I watch a movie using my PC I use the utility "Nero DriveSpeed" to set my CD-ROM to 8X. There is some software and text about this here: CD Speed (http://www.cdspeed2000.com/)
On the amiga I am not so sure if anyone have written a utility like this.
/Patrik
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CD Speed looks like an interesting tool, but its not very flexible. You can limit your speed but it stays limited until the next reboot, and it the drive can't speed up again if it needs it. Maybe someone should code an app for the Amiga that lets the drive run at the speed you need, rather than always at full.
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Buy a decent DVD drive, either Toshiba or Pioneer. Main difference is noise, and performance is pretty damn good, with lots of small files as well.
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i know the problem - i had a 56x rom in my pc, it got so hot with a cheap(er) CDR in it the silver top of the disk peeled away and i took 3 hours cleaning the drive. Utter uslesness concidering it takes 1. longer to spin up and 2. the speed of data transfer is not that greater anyway, id rather wait a few seconds longer than 35mins to reburn a CDR. The best drive(s) i ever had were my samsung SCR32-32 and my old pioneer super10x
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Then there are the horror stories of CDs cracking up inside the drive and shards flying out (happened to a friend of mine, but it all stayed inside the drive). I read about some people who were very concerned with this at schools, where the drives are often at eye-level. And at the end of last year, a load of manufactures decided not to produce 56x CD-Rs, staying at 48x instead:
"Along with Sony, Yamaha, and Plextor, Maxell has decided that spinning a disc fast enough for 52X recording is dangerous, producing a level of stress that can damage the disc"
I just get by on a 36x reader, 8x writer (slow, but does the job) and the A1200 makes do with a 4x reader!
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In my PC (My miggy aint got no CD:-( ... )
i have a 32 speed reader
Teac 4x writer (slow but will write a book if you ask it to - would never change it seen as i write most of my CDs for the car i do it at 1x)
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I completely agree, which is why I stick with my two 6/2 speed scsi burners and my 14.4 speed scsi cdrom drive.
I have some low-speed IDE drives around somewhere too, should I need a cdrom-drive for a pc or whatnot. I would most certainly never pay ANYTHING for the "new" drives.
Sincerely,
-Kenneth Straarup.
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I think it depends very much on the manufacturer of the drive:
My LG 48x CD-RW is very quiet and ultra-reliable.
My 16x Pioneer DVD slot drive is also very quiet and ultra-reliable, and reads files at lightning speeds.
My 24x Cyberdrive CD-ROM for my A1200 is ultra-reliable but not as quiet as my LG and Pioneer drives which are much faster.
I have heard some cheap/unbranded drives that sound like Concorde taking off!
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The problem is the drive's access time verses the read speed. Take a look at this to start with:
most 16x and higher drives are "constant angular velocity" (CAV) drives, instead of "constant linear velocity" (CLV).
CAV starts out about "half speed" and then speeds up to faster speeds as the write moves from the inside of the disk to the outside. So a 24x might only start at 8, 10 or 12x. A 32x might start out at 12, 14 or 16x. A 48x might start out at 16, 20 or 24x, etc...
The fastest CLV drive I ever had was a Lite-On 16x. It whipped my CAV drive TDK 24x at writing Yellow Book, sub-5 minutes to almost 6 minutes.
http://www.matrixlist.com/pipermail/pc_support/2002-November/002408.html
So, along with the CAV/CLV speed issue confusing matters, you have the fact that the drive is going to wait to read any data until it has fully speed up to its appropriate revolution veliocity for that area of the disc.
In a nutshell, your drive takes so long to read data as it is so fast. As the read speed increases, the read access times decrease.
Damien
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I have heard some cheap/unbranded drives that sound like Concorde taking off!
With my philips its cheap and branded .my lg dvd drive was bought because it is my favorite budget make being that lg stuff is very reliable and is easy to make it multiregion it replaced my old mutiregion panasonic which took quite a while to acess discs as well as not reading some cdr discs.plextor make the best drives. :-) My old 4 speed teac writer is the best at everything leaves a liteon standing for quality.
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I've recently bought a Plextor PleXCombo PX-320A DVD/CD-RW drive, and I have to admit I'm quite pleased with it. The drive is relatively quiet when reading, and performance is quite acceptable, a huge improvement over my old PleXWriter 4/2/20 drive.
OTOH, I've had both a 48X CD-R and a DVD drive that took ages to get up to speed and sounded like jet aircraft taking off.
It depends on the drive. Not all new/fast drives are bad, and not all of them are good.
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The prices of the drives now and the manafacturers need to make everything cheaper to compete with cheaper makes of drive im sure does not help .To be honest my thermaltake 9 cpu fan cooling my athlon xp 2400 makes more noise i ran it at just under 4000rpm, very loud at a max of 5800rpm. :-D
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Depends on the drive. This IBM I'm using came with a Toshiba 4x? 8x? 12x? that's as noisy as a "jet engine" 40x Lite-On. Meanwhile, Lite-On (they're a huge manufacturer) makes tons of different movements and firmwares, some better than others.
I recently wound up with a "52x24x52" AOpen/BenQ rebadge that's much "smoother" in operation than most things I've tried- they've probably gone to fluid-dynamic-bearings or somesuch on the motor, though heck if I know. I believe one of the buzzwords involved means "We spin the drive up to about 8x, then faster if it proves to be a sustained read."
So... it's a tossup, and as these things are now as cheap and as common as floppy movements, it'll probably continue to be. Anyone have a favorite make of floppy that's *consistently* good across all random model variations you might get paying $5 for a drive?
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Well I've had soem odd experiences with Cd/DVD drives. I never realized at first that CD drives are different from DVD drives (for the purpose of reading CDs) But they are! I have a game that only works with true blue CD drives. Second, my very name branded 12X Creative Labs (makers of fine sound cards) is very shoddy. My CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives are 12X8X32X and 16X respectively. I do not know why three numbers for the CD drive, thats just how its written.
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My CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives are 12X8X32X and 16X respectively. I do not know why three numbers for the CD drive, thats just how its written.
32x CD read.
12x CD-R write.
8x CD-RW rewrite. (Mikeymike was pedantic) :-P
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8x CD-RW write.
That is, rewriting speed, as opposed to just writing to rewritable CDs :-)
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CD-Drives ARE getting less reliable!
52x drives have been known to actually destroy the CD inside the drive! Its usually cheapy CD-R's that are made of a cheap kind of resin
they explode with a loud bang and kill the drive!
i wish i still had my old 12x SCSI SONY drive :(
that was my favorite drive
BTW the brand can make a big difference! i prefer Sony and LG
there is a drive that allows you to not only select its speed through software but also from the buttons at the front! its either asus or aopen...
you should consider the brand of drive you buy when you get one
ive had the best experience with sony
some drives are also more scratch tolerant than others!
got scratched CDs? if so you should know that some brands of drives will read those CD's - others wont
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My vote for the best CD drive manufacturer goes to Plextor. I've had three Plextor drives (all SCSI so far) and intend to get a fourth (IDE this time) soon.
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I know exactly what you mean.. I hate modern CD drives, most of them sound like a hairdryer running on nitrous oxide....
My first CD was a Toshiba 4x SCSI, and it`s still in use in my A4000.. when I first installed it,it was so quiet I thought it was broken .. until I saw the LED on the front flashing away.
The 8x IDE I put in my PC didn`t last the year, it made so much noise, the damn thing just wouldn`t stop whizzing and buzzing, even when it wasn`t being accessed.. so I tried to fix it by punching it several times :-o
So I bought a 40x replacement, and it`s been getting noiser and noiser all the time..last week the whole PC was only seconds away from being thrown out of the window ( OK, so most of the fustration was down to the cruddy MS OS installed !)
Why can`t manufacturers just make well built, decent quality products instead of always trying to be the fastest or being riddled with "features" that no one really wants??
I`d rather have a silent 8x CD that lasts for ages rather than an noisey uberdrive that will be lucky to even outlive the warranty.
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Doobrey wrote:
Why can`t manufacturers just make well built, decent quality products instead of always trying to be the fastest or being riddled with "features" that no one really wants??
For the same reason none of you wanted to deal with CD caddies when they were commonplace.
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i have a sony cd-rw which i am pleased with performance wise but its sounds crap and cheap, also an lg cd-rw which is quite & smooth in operation but features are just not there, also a pioneer dvd, 2nd one i have owned and its crap noisy and unreliable as was the first, i would never buy pioneer again, i think i will go for teac or plextor next, but my friend just bought a plexwriter and it to is crap not like my other mates one which is very nice.
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Well I will give HP my vote. I have had a HP 8200i 24x4x4 for a couple of years. Cost me £50 second hand. I have never had any trouble with it on either my miggy or any of my pee cee's. 4x might not be fast for burning, but 20 mins isnt too long to wait for a cd. You can always do something else while waiting. I would defo go for quality against speed when it comes to burning evey time.
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@jj is ur hp write rebadged?
my hp cd writer plus is an lg 8083 rebadged
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not as far as I know. windows and bios always sees it as an HP
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@JJ
Well I will give HP my vote.
My first burner was an HP back in the mid-90s. It cost me a whopping grand (1,000 UKP) and the CDs were about a tenner each.
Frankly it was a nightmare. I don't think it EVER worked properly, and eventually I replaced it with a Phillips (which was also quite dodgy). It wasn't until I got my 4x Plextor that I finally had a reliable writer, and it lasted me for years. In fact it still works fine now.
4x might not be fast for burning, but 20 mins isnt too long to wait for a cd.
Ahem... *choke*...
20 minutes is an age to wait, unless you only burn CDs very rarely. With having got ADSL not too long ago, I found my hard drives were getting clogged up with data and programs simply because I couldn't be bothered to wait while I compiled and burned backup/storage CDs. A couple of weeks ago I gave in and bought a PleXCombo drive (DVD player+CD-RW) because I felt my old writer was too slow and my old DVD drive was unreliable. What an excellent buy it has been - I'm chuffed to bits with it.
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KennyR wrote:
And does the same go for CPUs, do you think?
Not when your playing 3D games with adanced graphics, then you need all the pocessing power your machine can muster for all those floating point calculations (whatever they are).
However for everyday use, web, word processing and possibly simple accounts and graphics packages then an ass end second hand PC or Amiga would do just fine.
Toast (CD burning software on Mac) gives you a choice of speeds at which you can make your CDs burn, my top burn speed is 16x but with some of the crap quality media about (cheap cdrs) I choose lower speeds just incase I make a coaster or two. :-)
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i would also vote for plextor
plextor produce the fastest & best CD drive in the world
40x ultra wide SCSI! with a huge buffer
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Yup, I somethimes wish I gotten the UltraPlex 40X Wide instead of the UltraPlex 40X Max... But I didn't have a Wide Ultra SCSI controller at the time. :-D
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ShadesOfGrey wrote:
Yup, I somethimes wish I gotten the UltraPlex 40X Wide instead of the UltraPlex 40X Max... But I didn't have a Wide Ultra SCSI controller at the time. :-D
yep thats the drive i want for my next few(3-4) computers :-D i might have to buy them in bulk!
i wonder if there is a place where i can buy slow and new cd-drives
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@KennyR
My Yamaha CD-R/W drive does this on some data disks but not others. It's an awful sound and, just as you said, the data rate is terrible when they do this. There is a pause in data transfer while the drive speeds up to maximum speed and then spins down again to read/transfer the data. When you're transfering a huge batch of MP3s or FLACs, it just isn't fun. :-(
My Pioneer DVD-AO4 doesn't have this problem at all but then the CD read max speed isn't as high; I think it's on the order of 16x.
I guess I'll be trying that Plextor CD-R/W sooner than later. I hate the noise that the Yamaha makes when it spins up, though it has been a super-reliable drive and hasn't burned a coaster yet.
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My Teac IDE CD-RW drive can write at 24 speed (writes a full CD in four minutes), never had a 'bad' CD (not properly burnt or whatever) with it, it's silent, and it doesn't mind me doing stuff in the backround. I like :-)
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I had a Toshiba 32x that was the best CD Drive I ever owned. I've since replaced it with a Toshiba DVD drive, and I've had problems where the disc starts spinning insanely fast, only so it has to spin down (in several steps) before it can read the disc. It's pretty annoying.
I also had a Sony 32x that had horrible spin-up times, and was pretty dodgy with certain copy protection systems, but it would read any disk no matter how out of round it was.
If you're going to buy a CD burner, I recommend a 16x10x40 Plextor, or my own beloved 40x12x48 Lite-On. Both are outstanding burners and good CD-Roms.
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patrik wrote:
Fortunately CD-ROMs have the possibility be controlled by software to spin in a number of different speeds. That would enable you to run your 48X drive in 8X. If you are using windows on your pc I know for certain that a number of utilities exists.
Whenever I watch a movie using my PC I use the utility "Nero DriveSpeed" to set my CD-ROM to 8X. There is some software and text about this here: CD Speed (http://www.cdspeed2000.com/)
On the amiga I am not so sure if anyone have written a utility like this.
/Patrik
Yeah there is, try this
COPY CD0: RAM: ALL CLONE QUIET
Then run your program.
AmigaOne! Fixing what ms broke!
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I just tried NeroCDSpeed. My cheapo AOpen x52 cd-roms barely reach above x16 reads. WTF does the drive run at x52 sounding like an air strike when it only can read x16 anyway!?!
Do any of you guys know of some util that allows me to limit the drive speed to x16 permanently?
I'm assuming that Nero doesn't (havn't checked).
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@ Atheist
I certainly cannot do that - I've only got 10Mb of RAM :-( Although on the plus side the CD-ROM connected to it has a wonderfull feature that makes sure it never gets above the silent 4x speed:-) How much memory does your 'miggy have to fit in whole videos?
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@ JetRacer
A firmware patching job is the only thing I can think of that *might* be able to do it.
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I quote Patrick's earlier post: "Fortunately CD-ROMs have the possibility be controlled by software to spin in a number of different speeds. That would enable you to run your 48X drive in 8X. If you are using windows on your pc I know for certain that a number of utilities exists."
I think someone also mentioned that the effects of Nero isn't permanent (killed by reboot). So I just wanted some links to something more permanent since it's useless to use Google with keywords like "cd-rom", "utility", "speed", etc.